


I’d give to you the day just like today

by moodyme



Series: TRC/CDTH Prompt Week 2020 [6]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Ronan is a god basically, not edited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:22:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24419596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodyme/pseuds/moodyme
Summary: Ronan lives in the forest, and waits to be found.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: TRC/CDTH Prompt Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763401
Kudos: 36





	I’d give to you the day just like today

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from John Denver’s song “sunshine on my shoulder”

Ronan stirs at the groaning of the trees all around him. They are crying out in terrible loss, and Ronan aches for them.

_Heal him,_ they whisper.

They already know he cannot. What is dead is dead and cannot be healed.

_Bring him back,_ they moan.

He hesitates. That is, in a way, something he can do. If the soul has yet to pass on then-

Ronan reaches out, feeling, and - ah. No, not yet passed on. There is too much regret, too much yearning for one who still breathes.

The trees guide him to one of the clearings, where he finds the girl. Her weeping joins the chorus of the trees’ wails. She looks at him, and for a brief moment, fear and respect clouds the grief on her face.

The offer will be made, and he knows, intimately, the weakness that will make her agree.

He only hopes she’ll have better luck than he has.

* * *

  
  
Strangers were rare in the forest. So rare, in fact, that he could not recall there ever actually being any of them.

He watches as the stranger kneels in the thickest part of his forest, his hands gently lying on the earth beneath him. He wants to ask him what he is doing in his forest, but it’s been so long since Ronan has talked to a being that wasn’t a tree, that he hesitates.

He hesitates for so long, that eventually the stranger leaves without him saying anything.

A few days later, he returns, this time with a single, white, shell. He places near where he he kneeled before.

Ronan wonders what the significance of the shell is. He wonders even more when he continues to perform the ritual, day after day.

Finally, Ronan’s curiosity becomes greater than whatever had prevented him from speaking in the first appearance of the stranger.

“What are you doing?” He demands.

The boy startles, and flails, and casts a nervous look at Ronan.

_“What?_ ” The stranger mutters.

Ronan rolls his eyes. Right, Latin.

“ _I said,”_ He huffs, “ _what are you doing?”_

The stranger looks perplexed. “ _I don’t know,”_ he admits. Ronan almost scoffs, but the boy continues, “ _I’m just doing what the trees told me to do.”_

Ronan pauses. The trees told him to bring shells? He heard the trees?

Curious.

When Ronan didn’t respond, the boy sighed and rain a hand through his hair. 

_“Aren’t you going to laugh?”_

“ _Should I?”_

The boy laughed. “ _I honestly don’t know. Yes?”_

Ronan learns that the boy is named Adam, that he is a free Roman. 

He flushes when Adam tells him how much he loves the forest. How lovely he finds it. How peaceful it makes him feel.

Ronan isn’t used to being praised, but he thinks he likes it.

* * *

In the spring, Adam arrives in the forest.

In the summer, Ronan falls in love with him.

In the fall, they are happy.

In the winter, the demon comes.

* * *

“I can save it,” Adam says, in the language of the trees. He says it like he has already made the decision. Probably, he has. It makes Ronan’s stomach twist.

“No,” Ronan says, pleads.

“You can’t stop me.”

That’s true. Ronan can’t stop him. He wants to, desperately, but he knows he can’t.

Adam has made sure of that. Ronan would curse him if he didn’t love him so much.

“The trees will all die,” Adam says.

That is also true. Some of them, Ronan knows, have already, and he aches for them.

Ronan takes a deep inhale, and makes the offer.

From the binding circle, he explains the risks, the terrible truth of it all.

“So I’ll get to see you again?” Adam asks.

Ronan shrugs. “When I find you. If I find you.”

Adam searches his face, and smiles. “Ronan. You can’t leave the forest.”

“I know,” He grimaces.

“Then, I’ll make you a promise,” Adam says, “I promise you, I’ll find you.”

Adam presses a kiss to his lips, and Ronan never wants it to end.

But it does, too quickly.

With a smile, Adam steps away, and says the words to Cabeswater.

In a moment, he is gone. The forest, Ronan, is saved. But Adam is gone.

* * *

  
He spends the next hundred years alone, waiting.

The next hundred is spent the same way.

Adam never finds him.

Then, suddenly, his forest has more strangers. They stay, make a home for themselves, and fall in love with the forest.

Ronan watches them. They worship the forest, and the forest pours out it’s love for them.

And, Ronan finds, he comes to care for the people of the trees.

* * *

Blue returns from her journey exhausted. Exhausted, and disappointed.   
  
She hadn’t found her Gansey.

“Tell me about him,” She sighs.

Ronan quirks his brow. “Who?”

“The one you’re waiting for.”

Now it’s Ronan’s turn to sigh. “I thought that the gods had looked into my dreams and formed him from the earth.”

“Did they?”

“No,” Ronan laughed.

“What happened?”

Ronan remembers the acrid smell of the air, the toxic fumes, the black sludge that was quickly spreading and devouring everything in its path.

He remembers the way Adam looked at him after he thoughtlessly told him what was happening.

He remembers Adams apology, and his hurriedly made binding circle.

That’s his curse, maybe. To remember everything. His blessing, too, he thinks as he remembers Adam bathed in sunlight, Adam smiling like freedom, Adam holding him.

Adam Adam Adam.

“Death,” He says, and refuses to let her frown affect him.

* * *

  
  
Blue’s Gansey has found her.

Ronan’s Adam has found him.

But Gansey remembers, and Adam does not. 

Blue notices how quite he has become, quite like the old days, when he would rarely interact with her people and he still seemed like a greater god to them.

Eventually, her repeated requests to tell her what is bothering him wears him down.

“Adam was the first person I gave the ability to be reborn.”

Blue doesn’t look surprised, and he wonders if he has been to obvious.   
  
“He doesn’t remember you,” she says, matter of factory. “I’m sorry.”

Ronan hesitates. “He won’t remember me. That was the deal I made - he would only ever get his memories of our time together if he sacrificed himself again.”

“Oh,” Blue breaths.

“A boon such as another life with your beloved is an easy enough thing for me to do for others, for myself the restrictions are much harder.”

“Does- did Adam, the first Adam, know that?”

In truth? It was one of the few things about that day he can’t remember. Had he told him everything? Had Ronan himself known about the condition when he gave the offer? Had it tragically slipped Ronan’s mind? He didn’t know.

* * *

There is a stranger in Ronan’s forest.

He has a deep darkness in his heart that disturbs the very earth he walks on. What he intends for the forest is terrible indeed.

Ronan goes to stop him, but he’s too late. Knows he’s too late when the air crackles around him, and he feels the surge of power. The trees hum out their greeting, happy to do the will of one who would offer them so much.

_“I will be your hands, I will be your eyes.”_

The offer is made, the sacrifice accepted.

Ronan is too late. He finds Adam in a clearing, leaves forming a perfect circle all around him. The forest is, for once, silent and still.

“Ronan,” Adam says, in the language of the trees. “I’ve made you wait so long.”

Ronan shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut. He can hear Adam approach him, soft as his feet are now on the earth.

“I would have waited longer.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I ended it there because I didn’t know how to continue it 😉
> 
> Btw, Ronan didn’t know that Adam would have to offer himself for the forest to regain his memories from his previous life.


End file.
